Have you ever felt paralyzed in a conversation like no matter what you said, it was going to be wrong? Like your body was braced even when things were quote fine. Today's episode is different. I'm going to read something I've never read before. And if you've ever loved someone who slowly made you smaller, this is for you. Welcome to your Thursday Thrive In Five, your five minute pause from the chaos, the gaslighting, and that text you knew better than to reply to. Take a breath queen, this one's for you. Okay. So this episode is going to be a little different. I'm not teaching first, I'm going to read something and it's not about one specific person exactly. It's about a pattern. And if you see yourself in it, I want you to listen all the way through. All right? Here we go. Dear narcissist. I didn't see you at first and that's the part that still gets me.
(01:12)
I didn't see anything that felt overly dangerous. I saw intensity. I saw big emotions. I saw someone who reacted strongly and I told myself that just meant you cared deeply. You told me that meant you cared deeply. I thought the chaos meant passion. I thought the tension meant connection. I thought if I could just communicate better, it will calm down.
(01:48)
What I didn't see was how I was changing. I started feeling paralyzed in conversations and I mean any conversation, not just fights or conflicts. I would rehearse what I was going to say in my head before saying it out loud because somehow I already knew it would be wrong. No matter what I said, it would get twisted. And eventually I stopped trusting my own reactions. I started questioning whether I was even justified in feeling like you were overreacting. Maybe I was too sensitive, like you said. Maybe I did misunderstand like you said. Did I even provoke it?
(02:40)
All things you conditioned me to believe. So instead of holding my ground, I backed off or I overexplained. I took responsibility for things I did not do. I avoided topics that might set you off. Fixing it, fixing us became my role and keeping the peace became my job. And my body was keeping score the whole time. My tight chest, my tight jaw, the constant exhaustion, pure exhaustion, feeling drained all the time. This low grade brace in my nervous system that really never went away, even when I white knuckled through. Even when things were quote fine, especially when things were fine. And to the outside world, to people who maybe got glimpses, "I protected you. I joked about it. I minimized it for myself and for them.
(04:02)
I made it sound dramatic, but normal. I didn't want people to see what I wasn't fully admitting to myself, that this was not just conflict. It was dangerous unpredictability. And that unpredictability, that constant unpredictability does something not just to your mind, but your body. There were moments that did cross lines. Moments my body knew were not safe. And instead of leaving, I normalized them. That's the part that is sometimes hardest to say out loud, that the shame and the guilt, that's where those come from. I normalized what my nervous system was screaming about. And the moment I couldn't unsee it, it wasn't dramatic. It was clarity.
(05:12)
It was realizing that this was not just emotional intensity. It was escalation. That my health mattered, that my peace mattered, that my safety actually mattered. And that protecting you was costing me myself. I didn't cut you out because I hated you. I cut you out because I finally loved myself more than I feared the fallout. I couldn't do it anymore. And once I saw it clearly, I couldn't go back to pretending it was just complicated. You were turmoil. You were chaos, but I am not. And now I don't live braced anymore. I don't twist myself to survive conversations. I don't minimize volatility to keep anyone's peace. And I don't and will not protect people who harm me emotionally or physically.
(06:48)
You don't get to live inside my brain anymore. You don't get to control me. You don't get to control my thoughts. You don't get to control my actions. You have lost that control and I have gained it. And that is freedom. So let me step out of the letter for a minute because if you resonated with that, I want you to understand something. This isn't just my story. That's why I saved some of the specific details. It's a pattern I see in so many women healing from narcissistic abuse. And here's what I want you to hear. If you feel paralyzed in conversations, that is information. Healthy relationships don't make you rehearse basic sentences. If you feel like no matter what you say, it's going to be wrong. That isn't a communication issue. It's a power imbalance.
(08:00)
If you constantly question whether you're justified in your feelings, that's conditioning. And when your words get twisted enough times, you stop trusting your own perception. You start thinking, "Maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe I am overreacting." That self-doubt did not appear out of nowhere. It was trained into you. And your body? Your body's not dramatic. It's a tool we have, right? It's a tool. You get the tight chest, you get the clenched jaw, the exhaustion that I talked about. After simple conversations, daily conversations, repeated daily, weekly conversations that are usually conflict. Your nervous system doesn't lie. So if your body feels unsafe, even if you can't logically prove why, that matters.
(09:05)
And protecting someone who harms you is not loyalty, it's survival. Many of us were taught to smooth things over, minimize, joke about it, protect the other person's image. But the day you stop protecting someone who is hurting you is the day you start protecting yourself. And that's where the healing actually begins. Clarity can feel like grief at first. Once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? But it is also freedom. And if you're in the stage right now where you're starting to see patterns clearly and you feel that mix of grief and strength, it can really be confusing. You don't have to navigate it alone. That is exactly the kind of work that we do inside my Calm and Clarity Reset call. This is my new offer I've been talking about last episode or two. It's just one focused hour to untangle what's happening, regulate your nervous system and get clear on your next step.
(10:27)
It's a soft place to start because you deserve peace that doesn't require survival skills. And it starts with regaining trust in yourself again, which can feel far right now. I get it. I've been there, right? But it is possible. I work with tons of women who start where you are and have amazing transformations. If you want to just jump feet first in, I have three, six, and 12 month programs as well. Or if you want to just take a little nibble and do that calm and clarity reset call, it's a great place to start. Okay? So I hope this helps in some way, maybe just a solidarity, maybe clarity in your own journey.
(11:32)
And maybe it's the push to say, "I want to get unstuck and I deserve more." So if you have any questions too, you can always email me my email and all the links to my programs or working with me one-on-one and a boundaries course. I have all sorts of goodies in my description notes. And the show notes of the podcast should be on the episode descriptions themselves and the main page. And don't forget to follow because this is a long game. It's not as long as you think. I will say that. It's hard to explain, but this healing journey can be quicker than you think, but it's not overnight. We have to be realistic here. We have to go through the process. But one-on-one, my clients will tell you we can have some tears, but we can have some laughs and some good times. And we get great sessions that are mind blowing, really mind-blowing work.
(12:38)
Somatic healing is amazing. If you don't know what it is, it is healing through the body. So we do coaching, narcissistic recovery coaching. Obviously we're doing that kind of talk therapy, et cetera. And then we do these beautiful methods of somatic healing, which is healing through the body because the body often is a little step behind of the brain. You might think something, but your body's still stuck. So we get unstuck in magical ways. Yes. I'm not talking fairy magical. Just to me, it's God magic. I'm a big man upstairs follower. So if you're on that journey too, that is helpful and we can always implement that into it as well. Sometimes we pray. If you are a God person, if you're not, we don't. If you are and we get on that topic, we can infuse a little bit of that Holy Spirit activation in there.
(13:38)
See, there you go. There's the magic. Holy Spirit magic. That'll be my next course. All right. Well, thank you for listening. Thank you for letting me share. I may share more details of my own experience on this podcast, but right now this moment is really for you and this is for just knowing that you're not alone and that there are these patterns and that you do deserve to feel better and to heal better. All right. Don't forget on Thursday, I have Thrive in Five, so we will do a little quicker episode, somatic healing episode or little quick TED Talk or something, whatever comes out of my body. And those are on Thursday. So again, don't forget to follow. And there is a Facebook group. Please join that with women, like- minded women like you. It's a private group, so you don't have to worry about bots and spammers in there, peeping on our stuff.
(14:42)
And yeah, I'm just so excited for you that you landed on my podcast. So welcome if you're new and if you are an oldie book Goodie, thank you for supporting and sticking around and hanging out. And always feel free again to email me with just a hello or any questions or if you want to suggest a topic. All right. Look for all the information in the show notes and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
